


A Domino Falls

by mary_pseud



Series: Damnatio Memoriae [2]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen, Masks, Modesty, Sadism, colour changing skin, male/female relations, naglon culture, violent culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 23:50:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13647009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mary_pseud/pseuds/mary_pseud
Summary: The Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria try to help a young couple escape their oppressive society.  Includes some discussions of sexual violence in the context of an alien culture.





	1. In Which the Doctor is Mistaken for Someone Else

"Well come along then, come along!" The Doctor opened the TARDIS door and stepped outside, staring around at the blank steels walls of what appeared to be a corridor. As he waited for his companions to emerge, he discreetly rubbed the dust off his shoes onto his baggy trousers, one foot to the back of the opposite calf and then the ot her.

"Oh! Well, it's certainly an improvement over the last place we landed," said Victoria, stepping out with the balanced grace of a well-groomed Victorian young lady, which in fact she was, her short modern dress notwithstanding.

"A nasty place that was, Doctor," Jamie agreed, stepping out and looking around with approval. "All grubby stairs to nowhere, with those great giant springs that went jumping up an' down them."

"Well, this is certainly cleaner. We shall have to see if it is safer." The Doctor marched down the corridor with a brisk stride, and his companions followed.

They made several turns, and found nothing but more blank steel corridors. There were vague rumbling noises in the distance, like thunder but impossibly low and distorted. It was quite a surprise when the blue-skinned man popped out of a door in front of them. His beard and hair were a sandy blond, but his skin was definitely blue, and he wore an asymmetrically slashed red garment that showed blue skin through the slits.

"Oh, at last," he said, with a slightly relieved tone. "It is so good of you to come, Representative."

"Ah, thank you," the Doctor replied, after looking around and making sure that he was the person that the blue man was addressing.

"Now, before we go any further, I have to be quite certain: you know nothing of the circumstances or persons in the matter of the Naglons?"

"I am oblivious to the entire affair," the Doctor declared grandly.

"Excellent! Please, come this way," and the blue man ushered all three of them forward (the Doctor quickly introduced Jamie and Victoria to the blue man, who said his name was Yvip and urged them to keep moving) until they all arrived at what looked like a waiting room. There were chairs and whirring machines against the walls, and a large screen overhead flashed with strings of data and graphs.

There were a variety of people in the room, some sitting and some standing, but the travellers' eyes were immediately drawn to the five aliens who stood against one wall. They wore spacesuits with steel-edged circular collars, and air cylinders on their backs. But it was their faces that drew the humans' horrified attention.

The aliens had hairy warty faces that moved: not like a face, but like a slug crawling or water rippling. Their faces wriggled on the fronts of their heads, and with every pucker and heave they changed colour. Those colours chased themselves over their faces, purple and mauve and pink, and their light-coloured eyes were expressionless by comparison. Clumps of what might have been hair, or maybe very thin tentacles, hung limply from their scalps.

"My word, what a unique species," the Doctor said, staring with fascination rather than horror. "Definitely not mammalian. Oceanic? Equivalent of the terrestrial cephalopods, or nudibranchs, or-?"

"They're horrible," Victoria said tightly. "They look like monsters."

"I can't tell, Victoria, behind all that ripplin' they could look like anything." Jamie wasn't quite as shocked; he had seen many strange people in the Doctor's company. He reached out and touched the Doctor's arm. "There's two more over there."

Seated by themselves, with empty chairs around them, were two more of the ripple-faced aliens. They were not wearing spacesuits, but plain grey coveralls. From the way they held hands, there was clearly some attachment between them.

Yvip came bustling back. "Please, Representative, sit down." He offered a well-padded white chair to the Doctor, who accepted it with pleasure. Victoria sat down, and carefully arranged her long wrap skirt (it has been chilly on those endless stairs, and she had been rather relieved to cover up). Jamie sat with his knees akimbo, kilt spread over his legs, staring at the two seated aliens who looked - well, he couldn't say looked, he couldn't read their expressions - who seemed to be scared out of their wits. Or something.

Yvip stood in the centre of the room. He held out both hands pointing to the standing ripple-faced people. "Naglons, the Representative of Justice has arrived. In the absence of a formal treaty between our governments, he will review your case and make a binding judgment. He has no foreknowledge of your complaint, and knows none of the people involved - correct?"

He darted a glance over his shoulder at the Doctor, and the Doctor smiled and nodded.

"Naglon g-, ah, men of Naglon, please make your opening statement to the Representative." Yvip backed away and took a chair of his own. The ripple-faced aliens leaned close to each other and whispered, and the Doctor watched in amazement as the colour patterns on their faces moved from person to person: one would turn red, then the ones on each side would turn red, and so on. It must be some sort of communication.

They seemed to have chosen their speaker. One of the aliens stepped to the centre of the room, and stared at the Doctor. He (presumably, as Yvip had called them 'men') looked the same as the others, at least from the neck up: perhaps his spacesuit was a little more elaborate, and he might have been a little taller than the rest.

"I am Head-Fist Therri, Captain of the ship Overborne." His voice was masculine, but he spoke with the stiff diction of someone mentally translating in their head one step before their lips. "I have been dispatched by our leaders to return two runaways of little status and no-"

"And they are?" the Doctor interrupted.

Therri just stared at him, his mauve face bulging and purpling in an alarming fashion.

The Doctor sighed. "Do these runaways, these people, have names?" he elaborated.

"They are," Therri shot a poisonous glance at the two seated Naglons, "Elvit and Brot. They should not be here. They will be a burden on you. They have no skills-"

"I do have skills!" One of the seated Naglons rose, but kept holding the other one's hand, he - she? - looked up with a deep pink face. "I have an offer of employment from the Barragan Corporation!"

"Really? Well, congratulations. The Barragan Corporation is an old and very reputable firm - that is, if it isn't now it will be," the Doctor amended. He still hadn't managed to find out just when they were.

"It is forbidden for unauthorized Naglons to leave Naglon. They are to be given back to us, for punishment." Therri stared at the couple, and his face abruptly went white with featherings of lilac around the eyes and the thin-lipped mouth. "Severe punishment." His voice caressed those last words.

Yvip cleared his throat uneasily. "Will Elvit and Brot please rise and make their statement."

The two seated Naglons stood, their hands still entwined. The one who had spoken before looked at the Doctor and turned a shade of peach-orange.

"I am Brot, and this is Elvit. I have taken the training-"

"It is forbidden to speak of the training with outsiders!" Therri abruptly roared, and everyone in the room jumped. His hand was clenched on a holster at his hip - an empty holster, fortunately.

"It is very rude to interrupt," said the Doctor, lips pursed as he glared at Therri. He was starting to think that Yvip's apparent avoidance of using the word 'gentlemen' to describe the Naglons was not an accident. The Naglon lowered his chin, his face purplish-red, and then turned at a word from one of his companions.

Brot was even more orange; the Doctor wondered if that meant embarrassment. "I have been trained on - on leaving Naglon. I have learned Galactic Standard Spaching, with additional technical vocabulary. I can live here, I can work here! I will not be a burden. And," his face turned mauve, "I will provide for Elvit."

The other Naglon rose, pale grey eyes bright in an orange-pink face. "I am a free Naglon female, and I choose to leave Naglon. I and my partner are voluntarily going into exile. Therri does not have the authority to return me-"

"I have the authority of the Inner Council," Therri hissed, and Elvit suddenly darkened. "You must return. Both of you."

"I will not." She thrust her chin out - maybe. Maybe it was just how her face was rippling. "The Council has no power here."

There was a sudden sound of drumming feet outside, and a voice shouting, "Wait! Wait!"

The shouter entered; he was a man with the same blue skin as Yvip, but his clothes were a sombre black, without slashes but with an ornamental series of white stripes down the front.

He quickly glanced around the room. "Is the Representative here?"

Yvip indicated the Doctor, and the man in black turned to him with a hasty nod.

"Representative, I am Villet of the Barragan Corporation. I am here to confirm that a Naglon named Brot has received an offer of employment from my company."

Therri's mouth was stretched open wide, baring fluted ridges of pink cartilage: it certainly was not a smile.

"I should like to review this offer, please." The Doctor raised one eyebrow; he had seen enough aliens exploited to be leery of this sort of thing. And this Brot was fresh off the homeworld - an easy mark, some would say.

"Of course." Villet went to one of the machines around the sides of the room, and it extruded a sheet of white plastic covered with text. When the Doctor read it, the offer seemed good enough: guarantee of advancement conditional on training, pay scale indexed to inflation, accommodations to be made to possible adjustments of alien biology and reverence to alien holy days.

"Well, this looks like a model employment offer, Mr. Villet. And I would certainly have every confidence in the Barragan Corporation keeping its word-"

"Your word is nothing if you have no tongue," Therri snarled; his face was literally swelling with rage, apparently, and his eyes blazed at them out of pulsating black slits. "You will have no tongue, no breath, no face or flesh or-"

"Threats are inappropriate, Mr. Therri." The Doctor stood, and raised his own chin. "You are not helping your claim by making them. Now, I would like to know the details of the punishment that your government plans to impose on these people."

"Severe punishment," Therri said impatiently.

"And after this punishment, what will happen to them?"

"After?" said Therri with a hideous grating laugh. His face went white, then almost purple-black, before fading back to mauve.

"Ah, didn't mean to say that, did you," the Doctor said under his breath. In a louder voice, he said, "I would like to confer with Elvit and Brot in private."

Yvip raised one hand in Therri's direction, and the alien actually held his tongue for a change. "That is permitted," Yvip said. "It is the duty of the Justice Representative to hear and understand both sides of the story, before making his decision. The Representative will return and deliver his decision as soon as he is certain of his facts."

"Yes of course of course, we'll just step around the corner here and talk, myself and my assistants. Come along, Jamie, Victoria. Elvit and Brot?"

* * *

Therri watched the five of them move out of sight, and set his weight back on his heels. He could wait. They would not escape; he was between them and the only exit. He did not care what this Justice Representative might decide; if the creature had any sense, he'd give Therri what he demanded. And if for some incomprehensible alien reason this Representative decided to let the runaways go, Therri and his crew would be more than happy to simply tear them apart with their bare hands, then fight their way back to the ship.

He could wait.


	2. In Which Everyone Talks About That Which Is Not Spoken Of

As soon as they were out of Therri's line of sight, the Doctor turned to the Naglon couple, still walking hand in hand. "Look, I hate to speak ill of what is undoubtedly a very lovely relationship, but I'm not quite certain that you have thought about what you are in for out here."

The Naglons looked at him, faces mauve with white ripples moving over them - they rather resembled a raspberry ice cream float, in Jamie's opinion.

The Doctor went on, his voice persuasive. "You are cutting yourself off from everything - your people, your culture, your planet, everything! And from the sound of Therri, you aren't going to be welcome back. At least, not in one piece."

Brot turned a sort of shivering red, and then shook his head no in an exaggerated fashion, as though it was a learned gesture. "I have, we have, thought about that."

Elvit spoke, her own face bubbling like milk. "All we want, the only thing we want, is a place where we can live and be together, always. Where we can be free. Where we can never, ever have to have sex!"

Brot rippled in what might be confirmation, if confirmation meant turning dark pink with hints of peach. Both of them pointed their faces at the Doctor's companions, who were rather startled by Elvit's words. Victoria was delicately coughing behind one hand, while Jamie was grinning.

"Are you sure you know what you're saying?" he said, teeth flashing.

"I don't want to hurt Brot, ever!" Elvit's quite human-looking hand was clenched hard in Brot's, and her voice was passionate. "I know what men and women do, what women do to men, and it's horrible! I never want to do that to him, I love him too much!"

The Doctor frowned, as though trying to remember something; then he smiled. "Just one moment, here. I don't have any firsthand knowledge of Naglons, but I think there's a book in one of the TARDIS libraries that might help straighten this out. Wait right here!" the Doctor ordered, and quickly trotted down the corridor.

This left Victoria and Jamie with the two Naglons. Jamie looked curious, Victoria looked queasy, and Brot and Elvit looked, well, mauve. There was a long and rather uncomfortable silence; Jamie realised that he could actually hear the long hairs that grew out of the Naglon's facial warts rustling as their faces moved.

"Have you worked with the Representative long?" Elvit asked, transparently trying to make small talk.

"Oh, a long time for me," Jamie said. "He's my best friend."

"I've travelled with the - Representative, since my father died." Victoria dipped her chin and stared down at her shoes for a moment.

"You were lucky. I wanted to leave home after my mother killed my father, but I was too young."

"The same for me," Brot said, and Elvit touched her cheek to his in a sort of caress. Neither of them seemed to notice the humans' expressions of horror.

"Your mother killed your father?" Jamie's voice was dumbfounded, his Scots accent suddenly thicker. He knew many families that had lost men, to fighting or to accidents, but not like that. "And it happened to both of you?"

"It happens to a lot of families. The father gets too old, and he gets - used up." Elvit turned creamy-white. "But not Brot. I'll keep him safe, I promise."

"I believe you," Victoria replied a little hastily; Elvit certainly seemed tough enough. "But I don't understand-"

"Found it!" The Doctor came up to them, triumphantly waving a little purple book with gilt-edged pages. "Just what I was looking for." He took in their confused expressions (at least his companions' expressions), and elaborated. "The title is, 'Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Naglon Sex'." He squinted a bit at the text on the jacket, and then added a bit slower, "And it's subtitled, '(But Were Afraid of Being Killed If You Asked).' That's a metaphor I suppose-"

Both of the Naglons were turning a rather alarming grey shade.

"Someone wrote a book about Naglons and…and…that? They couldn't have, they wouldn't dare! It's strictly forbidden to write anything down!" Brot seemed to sway on his feet for a moment.

"Well, the author is only listed as A. A for Anonymous, perhaps. I haven't actually read the book, but-" the Doctor leafed through it quickly to the back, "ah yes, it has an index. Let's see, Intercourse, Accidental fatalities And… Blood Loss And…Disemb-, no that can't be right.

"Perhaps this isn't a very good index. I think I'll just read." The Doctor opened the book to the beginning and started reading, his eyes darting back and forth over the pages with eerie speed. And as he did, a look of horror crept over his face, drawing the creases deeper around his dark eyes.

He looked up at the Naglons, and swallowed, before he could say, "My dear people, I owe you an apology. I didn't realise the sort of cultural pressures you were under."

"What sort of pressures?" Jamie asked, and then flinched a little at the look the Doctor showed him; grieved and ashamed, both.

"It appears that it is traditional on Naglon for the female to be, well, extremely violent towards males."

"Not me." Elvit might have been scowling; it was impossible to tell. "As soon as I told my family about Brot, they started telling me about how I would have to hurt him, that I would have to - do terrible things so that we could have strong, healthy children. And I'm not going to, never!" Her pale eyes were hot with fury.

"Yes, yes, it says here," the Doctor turned a page, "ah yes. There were tests done - or rather, will be done, showing that there is no correlation between the traditional, ah, stressing of the male, ah, of the male partner, and the health, genetic disposition, or overall quality of the children that result."

"I don't think I quite get that," Victoria confessed.

"Well don't you see, my girl, it's all nonsense! There's no reason for the female Naglon to harm the male during mating, no physical component or biological basis to it. There is no reason why a gentle relationship would not produce children as healthy as a, well, as a not-gentle one would."

Elvit went from grey to black with shocking suddenness. Her face swelled, but her voice was flat when she spoke: flat with suppressed rage.

"You mean that my father, my brothers - all of them were hurt and killed for no reason? That they would have had children anyway? That it was all for nothing?"

"I," the Doctor closed the book at though revolted for a moment, and brushed his dark bangs with his free hand. "I am very sorry."

Without warning Elvit smashed her palm against her forehead. Everyone jumped, including Brot; obviously this was a very significant gesture in a species with such a flexible face.

"It's horrible," she said thickly. "Horrible."

"Couldn't you just have been gentle with him?" Jamie's round face was concerned at he looked at them.

Both of the aliens nodded no, slowly, faces fading back to mauve.

"The doctors check," Brot said dully. "Everywhere on Naglon, they check married men to see if they are - wounded. Only if you're chosen to go offworld are you safe, and then only so long as no woman chooses you. I did take the offworld training, they started training me when I just a youth. But I failed the final test-"

"How?" the Doctor asked.

Brot's shoulders slumped. "Insufficient aggressive tendencies. And then Elvit chose me," he wiggled his fingers in her grip, "but she was kind, and would not hurt me.

"We decided to run away. I got a message out to the Barragan Corporation, and they made a job offer. I'd been scheduled to take my first trip here, so we stowed away on a Threm ship and we were free."

"For a few days," Elvit continued. "Until we landed, with Therri right behind us. He would have rammed the ship if his had been larger."

The Doctor was pacing back and forth, his hands behind his back; he had handed the book to Jamie, who was looking at the index in the back with a rather appalled expression. "It seems to me-" the Doctor started.

"Please, Representative, you have to help us!" Elvit's voice was passionate as she moved to face Jamie. "Please, you can see what will happen if they take us, even if Therri doesn't torture us both to death on the return trip-"

"Which he probably will," Brot added. "Naglons males don't often get a chance to harm a woman. They'll be unbearable to her, Representative. Please, for the love of justice-"

"For the love of life, for the love of love itself, you have to help us!" she said, her face white as snow, her eyes surrounded by rippling pink blushes as she stared deep into Jamie's eyes.

"Er, ah," Jamie finally got out, "I'm not the Representative. He is, over there," and he pointed to the Doctor, who had been watching this exchange with the most curious look on his face.

"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, you fl - you people all look very alike to me." Elvit's eyes dropped to Jamie's hands. "I saw you were the one holding the book and thought-"

"Hang on a minute here, just, let's hold on." The Doctor came closer, dark eyes suddenly crackling with excitement. "Are you saying that we all look the same? That you can't tell us apart?"

"Your clothes are a little different, but we don't really look at those," Elvit said, pointing to the Doctor's trousers. "Your faces, they are all the same. They are all so - still. And flat."

"Like skulls, no offence." Brot rolled his head in what might be an alien shrug.

"Tell me, do you think Therri would have the same problems? That he wouldn't be able to tell Jamie and Victoria and myself apart?"

"Oh yes, he had many problems talking with Yvip, and confusing him for other people."

"What are you on about?" Jamie knew the twinkle in the Doctor's eyes, and it usually meant mischief of the good sort.

"I think, Elvit, Brot, that I might just have a way for you to get out of this building, before I present my decision, which will be in your favour of course. But if you aren't here, it will lessen Therri's chances to try and take you back by force."

Elvit and Brot looked at each other, and then back at the Doctor, their faces boiling white.

"You could do that?"

"Yes, I rather think I can - that is, if Jamie and Victoria are willing to help."

"I'm in," Jamie said stoutly.

"I'll help if I can," said Victoria a little more timidly.

"Splendid, splendid! Then let's take these two fine people back to the TARDIS, and get them some new attire."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The author of the Naglon sex manual is probably not A for Anonymous, but A for Avva from my story "A Pair of Dice"; presumably the Doctor would have picked up the book in the future, after Avva had met the as-yet-unborn Tragan.
> 
> The women of Naglon seem to be culling their race of the most aggressive individuals, by sending them on space missions and giving them fewer opportunities to be mated. However, the most successful of the aggressive males are brought back for mating with the Inner Council, ensuring that there is always a strain of aggressive males available who are presumably under tight watch by the Council.


	3. In Which Costumes are Donned and Doffed

The TARDIS was incredible enough that the Naglons went completely still-faced at the sight of it; nothing moving but their mouths gaping wide. It was bigger on the inside than the outside! It was full of machines, of machines and corridors and rooms and plants and it went on and on and on! The Doctor and Jamie had to be quite firm in marching them left, right, right, left, up, around, and to the wardrobe section.

Here were clothes from a thousands worlds and satellites, leather and velvet and metal and feathers and denim, all intermingled. Armour suits stood shoulder to shoulder with gossamer carapaces, ornamental wings were racked next to Inverness capes, and shoes were here, there and everywhere like little sleeping animals. The Doctor sent Elvit and Victoria to find a dress that resembled the one Victoria was wearing now, while he and Jamie searched for something that could pass for a kilt.

"Here we are!" said the Doctor, carefully unrolling a sheaf of circuitry-printed rice paper to reveal heavy woven cloth. Jamie pointed at it indignantly.

"He can't wear that! I'd never wear that tartan, it's all wrong!"

The Doctor cast a sharp eye on the cloth in his hands, and then on the kilt Jamie was wearing. Maybe there was a little more red in the one he held, but-

"Jamie, if they can't tell people's faces apart, we can assume that the finer points of weaving will go right over their heads."

Jamie looked profoundly doubtful "Well, I suppose it'll pass - if they don't look at it at all."

"Precisely, Jamie, that's exactly what we are hoping they do." If Elvit couldn't notice the difference between the Doctor's black suit and Jamie's kilt, that seemed like a reasonable hope.

"But I'd still never wear it," Jamie added.

* * *

"Look, this dress is a lot like mine," Victoria said, pulling it out from between a green scaly cape and a leather jacket that smelled faintly of chemicals.

"I think it will fit, yes," said Elvit, paling. She touched the front of her coverall and it opened - all the way down. Victoria turned red and turned her eyes away. She couldn't seem to help it, but she hoped she wasn't being rude.

"Your face has changed colour!" Elvit said, moving close to Victoria. "It - you almost look like a person, when you do that."

"Oh, I mean, well, thank you. But I can't really change colour deliberately, the way that you can." She smiled a little desperately, darting her eyes towards Elvit and away, and held out the dress between her and the alien woman like a shield.

Elvit seemed totally unconcerned with her state of undress as she took the dress and held it up against herself. She said slowly, "The Representative is a very great man. To help us escape. He's right not to trust Therri, you know: even if he rules in our favour, Therri will still want to take us away."

She took the collar of the dress in one hand and pressed it to her lips, in what seemed to be a formal gesture. "And if his plan does not work, I will be honoured to die in this." Then her face turned an unnerving purple. "But I will fight them, before I die."

Victoria swallowed, but gamely helped Elvit put on the dress, and tied her wrap skirt over it. She stuffed a camisole under the top of the dress, to round out Elvit's chest. From the neck down they looked, well, a little similar. She didn't know what they were going to do about the alien woman's face, though. A hat? No, she wasn't wearing a hat now.

Well, the Doctor would know.

* * *

"Masks!" said the Doctor, holding aloft two flat boxes the size of large books. "Standard humanoid model, self-adhesive, and they have a rigid layer to keep your, ah, rippling from showing through."

They had reunited in the TARDIS control room; Elvit and Brot dressed in an approximation of Earth attire, matching Victoria and Jamie as close as they could. The two coveralls were draped over a hat stand. But the alien's faces were mauve with asymmetrical splotches of red here and there, and they seemed confused.

"Excuse me, but what is a mask?" said Brot.

"A mask, you know. A disguise, a false face."

"A false face? But where do our faces go?"

"No, you see my friends, you put it on over your face, and it covers it. Wearing these, you'll look like a human, and the Naglons will think that you are Jamie and Victoria!" The Doctor looked quite pleased with his plan.

Victoria wasn't quite so sure; Elvit and Brot were a bit taller and stouter than either of the humans. Maybe if they slouched it would work.

Brot was turning redder. "But - we won't be able to see!"

"No, you can see through the mask. Like this." The Doctor balanced the two boxes a bit precariously on the slanted white control panel, and opened one. He held it up in front of his face, and stared at them through the eyeholes.

"No, I mean, I won't be able to see what Elvit is saying, what she means. I can't understand her, not if I can't see her face!"

"Well, you can still hear, can't you?"

"I'm sorry, but it sounds - horribly indecent. To go out where people can see you and have your face covered, it's just - it's the rudest thing I've ever heard of," Elvit confessed, turning very purple. "I don't know if I can do it."

"Look, please, it's just for a little while. You can take them off once you're away from here," Victoria reassured them. "And you can still talk. Just - only with sounds."

"Facial colouration is a large part of your vocabulary, isn't it?" the Doctor said, putting the mask aside. "All your verbal speech, it's just - cues for your colours, correct?"

Both of the aliens were shaking their heads no, over and over again.

"I can't do it." Elvit was the deep swollen purple of a bruise, and Brot was swelling as well. "It's just - I can't imagine; you can't imagine how embarrassing, how shameful it would be, to be out in public with your face covered. No, I can't do it."

"It'll a lot more embarrassing to die in public because you won't wear 'em," said Jamie, his tone a little rough.

"You can't understand," Elvit started, and Jamie interrupted her.

"If someone told me that I had to go out in public with my mouth covered so I couldn't talk, or I'd be killed, well, I'd put up with it. For a little while."

"Oh?" said the Doctor, interested.

Jamie looked exasperated. "You don't need to show your faces, just to get out of here! You just have to say to Villet, let's go. Follow him, and you're free."

"But-"

"I'm not a Naglon, am I? I can't read your faces. But I can talk to you, I can understand you. We aren't that different, not really. Why, I could tell from the way you sat together, from the way you held each others' hands, that you were special to each other. You didn't need words for that. You don't need your colours to talk our way, so just wear the masks."

"You could tell we were in love from the way we sat?" Elvit said, and she and Brot turned lilac in unison. "Really?"

"Really," Victoria seconded, and the Doctor nodded, smiling.

Elvit made a throbbing noise in her throat, and then held out her hand. The Doctor opened the second box and handed a female mask to her, but Victoria had to help her get it positioned correctly around her eyes, while Jamie did the same for Brot.

The difference was shocking. The aliens' head tendrils now looked just like uncombed hair, sitting atop completely average-looking human faces. Their necks flushed mauve for a moment, then faded to a white very close to the humans' complexion. Behind the masks, pale eyes darted back and forth, and when they glanced at each other the couple flinched and then looked away.

"It's just for a little while," Elvit said, and Brot shuddered.

"Just a little while," and he held out both his hands. She took them, and held them tight, very tight, for a very long moment.

Then she turned to the Doctor. "Now we're ready."

"Now here is what we are going to do…."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to cut a joke about a Stewart tartan kilt here, not only because the colours were too dissimilar, but because the clan tartans were not formalised at the time of Jamie entering the TARDIS (1746).


	4. In Which They All Run Away

Yvip didn't like the look of the Naglons. He had the sense that the feeling was mutual.

"How long will they be?" Therri growled, standing close enough to Yvip that he could feel the tips of the Naglon's facial hairs brushing against his own face.

"The Representative is obviously being very thorough in his interrogation," Yvip said soothingly. "Let me go check with him." He would enjoy being away from the Naglons for a little while.

He went down the corridor, and nearly collided with the Representative and his companions, and the Naglons. But something had changed - in fact a lot of things. The Representative's companions were wearing the Naglon's grey coveralls, and the two people with them - the ones wearing masks…

"May I ask what is going on here, please?" he said, crossing his arms and raising his chin just a hair.

The Representative coughed, then stepped forward. "Mr. Yvip, it is clear to me that these two young people are escaping the worst, the most hideous sort of oppressive society. And from my conversations with them, I strongly believe that Therri will not honour the decision, that is to say my future decision that I am about to make, that they should be allowed to live here and not be compelled to return to Naglon."

"And?"

"Well, I thought it would save some, well, save some trouble, if Elvit and Brot could just sort of, you know, stroll out of the transit building? While my companions stay here in the corridor, wearing their coveralls, and make the Naglons think that they are still here…"

The Representative's voice trailed off at the sight of Yvip's scowl.

"That is well outside the letter of the law. All members of a dispute are supposed to be present for the Representative's decision," he said severely. Then he paused, and a smile rose like white dawn on his blue face. "And it is my job to uphold the spirit of the law, and not the letter."

He reached out and took Elvit and Brot's hands in a clumsy three-way grip. "Good luck - I'll do all I can to help."

The Representative gave a relieved smile. "That's very decent of you, Mr. Yvip, a very decent thing indeed. Now, if you could just announce me?"

 

* * *

"How long do we have to stay here?" Victoria asked quietly. She and Jamie were standing in the corridor, backs to the room where the Doctor was getting ready to give his speech. They heard his voice.

"There's no reason for my friends to wait here, why don't they go out and see some of the sights. Mr. Villet, if you would be so kind as to point out the route to where they want to go?"

"Of course," said Mr. Villet a little too eagerly; Jamie would bet that Yvip had had a quiet word in his ear. "Come along, you two." And that was that: Elvit and Brot had escaped. Now the Doctor's task would be to keep the other Naglons here as long as possible, and keep them in the dark, to give the couple more time to get away.

"Now then." The Doctor's tone was so familiar that Jamie could picture him perfectly in his mind: feet spread a little apart, a serious look on his face, and perhaps with his thumbs under his suspenders. "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, it falls upon me to tell you all of the reasoning that has gone into my final, and legally binding, decision."

Jamie winked at Victoria with a smile; then his smile faded. There was someone else talking, hissing almost, who sounded like they were standing in the doorway between them and the Doctor. They couldn't turn around of course: one glimpse of their faces and the Naglons would know that they were impostors.

"Therri is unimaginative," the voice hissed. "He will give me to you for the torture; he values my expertise that much. I know exactly what I will do to you. Both of you. In fact, I think I will make you watch while we work, one to see and one to suffer, yes…"

Jamie held his finger to his lips, shushing Victoria. Their voices would be a dead giveaway - perhaps literally dead. They just had to stand there, backs to the door, and try to concentrate on the Doctor's words instead of the Naglon's hissing.

The Doctor was saying, "In the grand galactic tradition of universal sanctuary, where every planet acts as neighbours to one another in times of hardship-"

But closer and harder to ignore was the Naglon. He detailed tortures of maddening cruelty; a fair number of them seemed to concentrate on portions of anatomy that neither of the humans possessed, which made those words easier to disregard. But when he started describing exactly what the crew would do to Elvit, while Brot watched, Victoria felt her face redden again, this time in fury.

Jamie clenched his fist in front of her, and then made a striking motion, several times. Victoria remembered: Brot had told them that if they had to fight the Naglons, they should try to punch them in the sides, where a human's lower ribs would be. Victoria made a rather weak smile, and clenched her fist in turn.

But the Doctor sounded like he was winding up his speech.

"-and therefore, in my role of Justice Representative, I hereby declare that the Naglons known as Elvit and Brot shall be permitted to remain on this planet, as they have chosen."

"What? WHAT?" Therri's roar was unmistakable.

"Too late - they are ours!" the Naglon voice shouted right behind them, and heavy footsteps stamped against the steel floor. Jamie turned and raised his fists, and the Naglon came to a sudden halt.

"Where are they?" he nearly screeched, face purple.

"Back there," Jamie pointed, and the Naglon actually turned around and looked - just in time for the Doctor to slip round him. His face had lit with the brightest smile yet.

"And now I think we run," he suggested, and they ran. Behind them came shouts of alarm, and the sounds of sirens, but closer was the thudding of the charging Naglons in pursuit. The TARDIS was close, very close, just around this corner and down this corridor, but all the corridors looked alike….

* * *

"I will eat your hearts in front of your eyes, vermin!" Therri bellowed, and then slid ignominiously as the prey turned and vanished down another corridor. The crew's spacesuits were heavy enough that they were forced to run on two legs, which made them clumsy.

His face was nearly too swollen to be seen out of, black with rage. His men were going the wrong way down the corridor! The aliens were too fast. They had dodged round through the corridors, and were heading back towards him.

He couldn't get all of them. But he leaped forward, arms wide, and while one of the aliens went to each side and past, the third came to a halt almost within reach. He stepped forward, gloating. His men were close, he could hear them shouting. The aliens were shouting behind him as well, but he ignored them. Perhaps if he hurt this one enough, the others would come back to be captured. He reached out, slowly, staring at its ridiculous blank face.

It spoke, its tone as icy cold and stabbing as that of any Naglon female.

"How dare you raise your hand to a woman!" she demanded, and punched at him.

Her punch was soft and sloppy, her feet not braced, her knuckles uneven, but she planted her blow firmly into Therri's side, right in the place where every male Naglon feared to be struck. He twisted sideways and fell to his knees, his breath a screaming whistle, every nerve and fibre of his being telling him to cringe, to grovel, to not let this terrible female hurt him.

Distantly, he heard his Second-Fist give a barking laugh at his leader's predicament, but all he could see was the female - the alien female - as she strode over him, took her two companions in hand and escorted them into a blue box that faded away. Some sort of transport, he thought, swallowing his shame.

Then he rose to his feet. He would discipline his crew later; right now he had to prevent them (and himself, for that matter) from being taken captive by whatever security forces this planet had. "We go!" he bellowed. "Back to the Overborne! Combat formation!"

* * *

"Whoof!" said Victoria, breathing too fast in relief as she heard the TARDIS take off.

"Young lady, you were magnificent!' The Doctor beamed at her, and even Jamie looked impressed.

"Thank you, Doctor," she said, and gave a little nervous laugh. "I didn't know I had it in me."

"I did," said Jamie, and grinned at her look of incomprehension.

The Doctor inspected the TARDIS controls. "Well, we're safely on our way. And so are Elvit and Brot."

"Oh, I do hope they will be all right," Victoria fretted. "They seemed so sweet."

"Sweet? Under all that ripplin'?"

"Yes, but - oh Jamie, it was them that I liked, not their faces. I mean, I suppose if we had more time to be with them, we'd start to learn all the things their colours meant."

"Who knows? Perhaps someday they will learn to understand us as well." The Doctor frowned, adjusting a dial. "Someday."

* * *

The tour of the Barragan Corporation facility had gone quite smoothly. After Brot excused himself from Villet's office, and prepared to retrace his steps to his new quarters, Villet's manager Yrit unexpectedly dropped by. Villet cordially touched palms with him.

"All right, Villet, give." Yrit sat down and ran his fingers through his beard, making his rank-beads clink. "Why him?"

"Why him - you mean Brot?"

"Who else?" Yrit narrowed his eyes and stared at Villet. "You've bent over backwards and stretched several regulations to get him hired. He does show considerable intelligence, but there's the language barrier to overcome, a period of adjustment to this planet's environment - so. Why him?"

"You are aware of the new planetary regulations related to diversity in the workplace?" Villet arched one brow, pale against his blue skin.

"Naturally. Barragan has always been a forward-facing corporation."

"And the compensation for hiring non-native employees is very generous."

"Very. But-"

"And that compensation is based on the percentage of the alien race represented in the planetary population. And Brot is the only Naglon employed on this planet. Considering the exit that those other Naglons made from the spaceport-"

"How long until the damage is repaired, do you know?"

"They haven't said; a reactive drive fired at ground level is bound to do substantial damage, though." He recaptured his train of thought. "Anyway, it seems a safe bet that he could be the only Naglon working on the planet for some time."

Villet slid a sheet of plastic forward. "Here are the figures - scaled for projections of increased corporate rank over time, of course."

Yrit's eyes widened. "He could just sit on his hands and turn a profit for us."

"Not that we'll let him, of course. We'll give him access to all pertinent training; advance him at a due pace. We want him to be happy here, to work well and harmoniously-"

"And not get hired away by anyone else."

"Precisely."

"He's wearing a mask, isn't he? He certainly doesn't look like he did in that first communication."

"He was given it on leaving the transit building, apparently. Up to him if he decides to wear it at work or not." Villet pursed his lips. "All that mobile facial hair might be a hazard, otherwise. Contaminating the work area, etcetera." Villet touched his own smooth-shaven cheek.

"Point taken. And well done, Villet." Yrit tipped his head to his co-worker.

"My pleasure."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Naglon who hisses at Jamie and Victoria in the corridor is probably the Second-Fist.
> 
> I never decided if the Barragan Corporation's ulterior motive in hiring Brot was a mark against them, or a mark in their favour. Your thoughts?


	5. In Which Love is Discussed

Brot entered his apartment with a deep throbbing sigh of relief. Elvit nearly bounced up from the chair where she was sitting, her bared face lilac with pleasure.

"Oh, we made it!" she enthused.

Brot went to speak, then peeled off his mask first. "We made it," he said, his own colours rippling in accompaniment to hers. He laid the mask down on a table and they embraced, cheek to cheek, and breathed in the feel of each other.

When they finally parted, Elvit said, "Look, out there!" She opened a window; it squealed faintly in its plastic track. "If you lean out - there, that's the sea."

"The sea," Brot said, his eyes staring at that tiny strand of green water and white sand, far away between the rows of identical white buildings. "A new sea."

Then he pulled back. He held her hands in his, a little sadly, and looked around at the generic apartment and its bland mass-produced furniture. "If we'd stayed on Naglon, our families would have given us an estate by the sea-"

"Where I would have to hurt you, and bear children whether I wanted to or not," she retorted. "Here is better. Here we are free to do as we want. And we can always get an estate later."

"Maybe. I hope. Villet talked about training-based advancement. I will probably be taking a lot of extra course work," he warned. "You may be bored."

She laughed, her face dindling with mirth. "Bored? I have an entire alien world to explore! I won't be bored, I promise. And before we get an estate, we need to get proper baths. There's just a big basin for putting water in here, no steam pressure system at all."

"No, no, the steam system exists, it's called a sauna. But the pressure isn't very high. Perhaps we can save up and get one."

Elvit pressed herself against him, their bodies fitting snugly. "I'll wash in a soup bowl if I have to, if it means being with you, and you being safe."

"What's that?" Brot asked curiously. He had felt a hard thing under Elvit's clothes, against her chest. She smiled and reached under the dress she still wore, and pulled out a familiar little purple book.

"The Representative gave it to me," she explained.

Brot looked at the book as though it were a poisonous fish. "Why would he do such a thing?"

"Brot, no, it wasn't an insult!" Her face flickered a rather lively pale pink as she went on. "I've been reading, while you were with Villet. There's a whole section in here on non-reproductive sex."

"Why would you have sex if you weren't going to reproduce?"

"Well, because it feels good."

"It does?" Brot frowned, his expression darkening. "I always thought that was just a story that men made up."

"Oh no, I think there are lots of things we can do that won't hurt you, and will feel very good, and won't have any chance of making children." She gazed up at him, the long hairs on her forehead waving as only she could wave them. "Would you like to read the book with me?"

They sat down on the couch, and began to read.

Then they moved to the same chair.

They ended up in the bathtub, filling it with steaming hot water and exploring each other with fingers and tongues and excited eyes, reading to each other from the book propped up on the tiny sink, reading each other, discovering themselves as they had never dared before.

They read for quite a long while, and over the days and weeks and years to come, they would make their own annotations, supplemental footnotes, and eventually write their own book, just for each other.

* * *

"Well, fix it!" Therri roared, sitting at the control console of the Overborne's communicator.

"I'm trying!" said the technician under the console, rearing back and showing his face. In its colours and undulations, Therri read frustration, fear, exhaustion, worry, nervousness, the pain of muscle cramps from being squashed under the console, a dash more fear, and the hope that he would be done soon. Then he stuck his face back under the console. The entire exchange had taken less than a second.

Therri glared at the mismatched dials and buttons, flickering all the colours of a face at him. Like the rest of the Overborne, it was a patchwork of equipment, the best that Naglon could produce supplemented with alien technology - whatever they could buy, find, or steal. The Naglon race had acquired space travel very recently, and they had no interest in slowly and gradually evolving their technology, learning step by step. They wanted it all, and now.

The crackling, distorted voice from Naglon continued droning on with stupid questions. "Explain again how the fugitives escaped you."

Therri fumed. In flight, they had captured a news broadcast from the planet they had just left, relating to the Barragan Corporation's new hire. They had also captured several messages suggesting that the Naglons were most definitely not welcome to return, but Therri thought that the least of his troubles. He had failed in his mission; he had damaged his ship in takeoff badly enough that they might not even make it back to Naglon; and this Speaker for the Inner Council was seriously stupid, or confused, or both. And until the visual channel was repaired, he couldn't understand more than the minimum of what the Speaker meant.

"They wore what the aliens call masks," he repeated. "Skins over their faces, that made them look like flat-faces."

"Where did they get these skins?"

"We believe they were synthetic skins; and as soon as this triple-drowned communicator gets the full data channel open-"

"Done," said the technician, sliding from under the console and then adroitly rolling out of kicking range.

"Yes! Prepare to receive!" and he started to type commands furiously. After they knew the word for the vile trick that the fugitives had used, they had scraped the alien world's broadcasts for certain keywords. Pictures flickered on the console: a pile of little wooden blocks (irrelevant, why did it keep coming up?), a square of cloth with two holes in it, a ceramic carving decorated with feathers and glitter, and-

"This!" Therri exclaimed, as a flat-face-shaped mask of some thin plastic appeared, and rotated on the screen. "These, they wore these on their faces! They could see out of the holes, enough for them to escape."

"We are not receiving your visual signal," the communicator crackled. "Your personal signal."

Therri irritably hit the appropriate button, looked at the screen as it lit with the transmission from Naglon, and his face went white. With deliberate force of effort, he made his face white as sand, with appropriate lines and dimples of mauve flattery marching across it.

He wasn't talking to a Speaker for the Inner Council; he was speaking to the Inner Council. The picture on the screen was unmistakable: a great oval chamber covered from floor to ceiling with mosaics in every shade of pearl nacre, flashing in the Naglon sunlight. The Council sat in their plain granite chairs, their robes draped with a planet's ransom of gems. They stared at him, faces mauve and rippling with interest.

One of them leaned forward, and her voice and face were passionately intent. "You are saying that with these - masks - they were able to, to," she groped for the right word, "to be mistaken for flat-faces?"

"Yes, ma'am," Therri said, rigidly holding his control. On the floor, the eavesdropping technician had frozen as well, not wanting to rise and risk being seen.

"Captain Therri," the woman's voice was suddenly, shockingly friendly, even as her face spiralled with curlicues of triumph, "this is spectacular. What you have learned is far more important than the capture of two runaways! If we can duplicate this technology of the mask, if we can use it -we can leave Naglon and not have to reveal ourselves! We can hide among the flat-faces, and they will never know who we truly are!"

"Yes, ma'am," Therri said as humbly as he could, trying to make himself small in his chair. The Council was all staring at him, with a horrible look in their eyes. A look of hunger.

"And for you, Captain, the greatest reward. By our will, you are raised to the level of Paramour of the Inner Council."

Therri kept his face white. Not the terrified and enraged black it so desperately wanted to be. With the greatest effort of his life, he let little flashes of pink roll over his face. "Surely I am unworthy of this honour," he said.

"No, Lord Paramour. What you have found will shape our policy of alien contact for the next century - or longer. Return at once." She opened her eyes wide, her own face rippling pink. "We will be waiting."

Therri turned off the screen at the 'end' signal from Naglon, and slumped back in his chair. Beside him on the floor, the Naglon technician glanced up at his grey face and read it, and coloured in sympathy. Sympathy, fear, relief, a barely visible dimple of sadistic delight-

Therri kicked him, his own face turning black for a moment and clenching so tight to his skull that his bones showed through.

* * *

As a Paramour of the Inner Council, the highest rank that any Naglon male could hope to achieve, Therri's first action was to throw his obnoxious Second-Fist out the airlock. As he watched his victim squirm and froth in the vacuum, it occurred to him that there were several other crew members who could stand a little walk.

It was hard to find them, but there were few hiding places on the Overborne. When he did, none of them raised a hand to stop him. They pleaded, but he ignored their pleas as he spaced them one by one. He had been the Captain, the strongest of all of them. Now he was a Paramour, untouchable.

Then he went to his quarters, and started to pack. As he was sorting and wrapping, he found time to touch the intercom and rasp, "Send Pilot Morriw to my quarters." Then he went on packing, his face a deep rippling blue, the only sound the shuffling of boxes and the crinkling of padding and the guttural wet sounds of his sobs.

* * *

The Pilot arrived, or rather was delivered to the new Paramour's door, in short order. When Therri opened the door, he found Morriw standing at attention with his feet tied together with a hasty lashing of rough blue string, too frightened to even try to escape.

"Come in here," Therri ordered, and Morriw managed two hops before slipping in sheer terror. Therri caught him and deposited him unceremoniously on the bunk. Then he had to unpack the box of personal effects labelled 'For My Family' for something to cut the Pilot loose.

Morriw took this unbinding as an invitation to speak - or maybe he was just too frightened at the sight of Therri, face wet with tears and roiling black, with the three-bladed scissors gleaming in his hand. "Lord, please, we won't make it back if you kill-"

"There's a contract on my desk," Therri said, gesturing to it with a swipe of the scissors. "Read it, then sign and face-print it."

Morriw stood, and cast a longing look at the door; but there was nowhere to run really. So he went to the desk, and read the contract. It was not a very long one, and when he was done, he looked at Therri with a face coloured with hope.

"I - Lord, why me?"

"Because you've always been honest with me," Therri answered, carefully taking a wrapped statue of the God with Six Hands and placing it in the box labelled 'For My Temple.' "Which is more than I can say for most people I know. Honesty is hard to come by, on Naglon. You're fast and tough and strong. And you'll need to be strong."

"To be your heir?"

"No, to be the Protector of my heir. Of my first-born son - if there is a son. As the Protector of a Paramour's heir you'll get a pension from the Council. Enough money to raise him, and pay your own way, for the rest of your life. And you can remain celibate."

Morriw shivered red for a moment before he consented. He signed the contract with a pen, then pressed a square at the bottom and focussed his eyes and face on it. It flashed, and then faded into a mottled mauve-purple-cream pattern - his personal colour signature.

"Are there - do you have any other requests, Lord?" Morriw wanted to think of something to say, but there was nothing. A Paramour of the Inner Council was the consort of the entire Council of females. If he was lucky, or perhaps unlucky, he would survive the first mass mating.

No Paramour had ever lived more than six matings, and very few survived for that long.

"My son - name him Tragan." Therri raised his head and stared at Morriw with a face striped blue with grief. "And love him, if you can. Because I will probably not even see him born, or touch his face, or see him walk or grow or live."

* * *

Victoria was in the wardrobe room, wrapped in a silk dressing gown and leafing through the clicking hangers almost reflexively while she thought.

Punching Therri had been a shock: the Naglon was so much bigger than her, and she'd hit him and he had folded up like wet pasteboard - wet terrified pasteboard. For a moment she felt guilt, and then she pushed it aside. It didn't matter if it was Therri's world or Therri himself that made him such a wicked, horrible creature. He deserved that punch.

She had been a little shocked to discover how much she had enjoyed delivering it.

But now she was looking for something new to wear. That short white dress was pretty, but chilly. She'd hung up the grey coverall, while wondering who would use it next. Now she pulled out a smart tweed jacket. Yes, this was more like it.

* * *

Jamie found the Doctor in the control room, carefully adjusting some of the many, many knobs that dotted the console's panels.

"Ah, Jamie. Could you give me a hand here? Just hold down this lever, while I try to adjust the temporal damping settings."

Jamie did so willingly, and studied the Doctor's face while he carefully tweaked a little black knob. He looked happy enough, but underneath Jamie could detect something else. Frustration?

He asked the Doctor how he was feeling, and the Doctor said, "I feel as though we may not have done enough, Jamie. We freed two people from a horrible society - but that's all."

"It's a start," Jamie said.

"Yes, yes, you're right. And maybe Elvit and Brot can contact other Naglons and tell them that they don't have to be cruel to their loved ones, but...sometimes when you push over one domino, all the others fall down, one after the other. And sometimes they fall all helter-skelter, and sometimes they don't fall. Sometimes there seems to be nothing you can do but wait, wait for Time to have her way with them."

Jamie had another concern. "D'you think I was being silly, Doctor, when I said that I could tell they were in love from the way they held hands? I mean, it's sort of a girlish thing to say."

"Elvit would probably think the term 'girlish' a high compliment." The Doctor smiled, not as broadly as he sometimes did, but it was a smile and it heartened Jamie.

"Because it was true. I could tell, just from the way they were with each other, that they cared. That they loved each other. Isn't that strange?"

"Strange and wonderful." The Doctor placed his free hand over Jamie's on the lever, and squeezed it a little. "Strange and wonderful."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dindle is a wonderful word, which I first encountered in C. S. Lewis' novel 'The Great Divorce.'
> 
> Since the Doctor theorises that the Naglons are of aquatic origin, I made Brot and Elvit interested in alien seas. 
> 
> Therri's diction is not as stiff in this last chapter, because he is speaking his native language instead of a learned one.
> 
> Therri's search of the planetary net gains him pictures of little wooden blocks - dominoes - because a small mask that covers only around the eyes is called a domino mask. This ties into the title and also the Doctor's final dialogue with Jamie.
> 
> Flat-face is of course the (insulting) Naglon word for non-Naglon races that do not have hyperactive faces.
> 
> Modern technology means that a formal Naglon contract has some sort of light-sensitive sensor in it that reads faces; I presume in the past, Naglons would have carried around multicoloured ink stamps as their signature.


	6. Epilogue

The next day, the Justice Representative walked into the transit building.

"Sorry I'm late," he said breezily. "My calendar reset last week." He looked around the room of busy people, none of whom were paying him the least attention.

"Did I miss something?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue: The real Justice Representative missed the news this morning, or he would have seen the story about Brot being hired. Of course, this would also have disqualified him from judging the case (possibly biasing prior knowledge of the people involved) so actually it makes sense that he doesn't watch the news. (Save!)

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback, reviews and criticism are always welcome and appreciated!
> 
> Chapter 1: In the Third Doctor audio adventure, the Doctor tangles with an alien named Tragan; when his species is revealed, the Doctor muses, "A Naglon…I've had trouble with them before." Here is my imagining of exactly what sort of trouble it was, along with Tragan's origin.
> 
> Victoria's wardrobe in this story places it between 'Tomb of the Cybermen' and 'The Abominable Snowmen.'
> 
> Apparently, just before this adventure, the TARDIS crew visited the Planet of the Slinkies.
> 
> It is possible that Yvip and Villet are humans who just happened to be blue-skinned; too much colloidal silver in their diet, perhaps? And in my ideal world, Russell Hunter would have played Yvip.
> 
> The Tragan in the audio adventure (and novelisation) had a very narrow emotional-colour range that only seemed to go from mauve (normal) to white/lilac (happy) to purple/black (angry); I have taken the liberty of giving these Naglons a few more colours they can turn.
> 
> The Naglon hierarchy designation of Head-Fist, Second Fist etc. is my own, as is the information on their sexual habits. "Paradise" only shows one Naglon, who seems to derive considerable pleasure from torturing and killing humans. And now I notice that Head-Fist is a pretty obscene title from a human point of view, is it not?
> 
> Galactic Standard Spaching = Spanish/Chinese/English hybrid tongue. It seems the Barragan Corporation and/or this planet have Earth immigrants.


End file.
